Frank Sinatra: "My dad came from Italy, but I'm an American."

Dear Everybody:

The big news today was that Trump has started ranting about Epstein--and won’t stop:

--Trump: "The Democrats are the ones who worked with Epstein, not the Republicans. Release all of their names, embarrass them, and get back to helping our Country! The Radical Left doesn’t want people talking about Trump and Republican success, only a long-ago dead Jeffrey Epstein--Just another Witch Hunt!"

--Also Trump: "Now 1 million more pages on Epstein are found. DOJ is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat-inspired Hoax. When do they say NO MORE and work on Election Fraud, etc. The Democrats are the ones who worked with Epstein, not the Republicans."

--Greg Canty: "And he’s off again, blaming someone else, pathetic empty vessel."

--Michael Dominowski: "A million more pages of Epstein files and they’re all fake? That’s a whole lot of hoaxin’."

--Shadow37: "Hey, Trump! If the Epstein files are a ‘hoax,’ why do we have miles of redactions?"

--Epstein survivor Marijke Chartouni: "Every accusation is a confession."

--The problem is that, with every post, Trump is revealing more and more about his relationship with Epstein. Joyce Vance said of his Christmas post, in which he talked about "the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to ‘drop him like a dog’ when things got too HOT, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn’t know him..." that "Trump suggests that he has a lot of information to offer about Jeffrey Epstein...he looks like a witness to me! Given this public comment and the long-term relationship between the two...I would want an interview with Donald Trump. If I were still a prosecutor, I’d send out two FBI agents to have a chat with him."

--The other problem is that by telling everybody to stop talking about it, he is ensuring that everybody keeps talking about it.

--And as a distraction, the posts aren’t working AT ALL.

--Wall Street banker Aristus Odinikaeze: "He has attacked Venezuela, and it didn’t drown the Epstein files. He bombed Nigeria yesterday and still hasn’t been able to overshadow the Epstein scandal. And all that was after government shutdown and National Guard deployments didn’t help him bury this Epstein story. He’s panicking!"

In other Epstein news:

--A spokesman for Trump denied the President had ever set foot in Epstein’s office, but her account was supported by Mark Epstein (Jeffrey Epstein’s brother), who said Trump visited frequently. "He was in the office all the time back then." That was also backed up by the secretary’s handwritten notes.

--On one occasion Epstein told an employee that Trump was short on cash and wanted a ride on Epstein’s plane.

--Epstein told one victim he had a bedroom always reserved for him at Mar-a-lago.

--One of Epstein’s former assistants said on dozens of occasions in the mid-90s, Epstein instructed her to call a pageant winner from somewhere in the world and invite her to visit him in Florida, offering them an all-expenses-paid trip and a $5000 dollar shopping spree.

--I told you yesterday about how it’s possible for people to read some of the redacted material. This may be because DOGE canceled the federal government’s Adobe Acrobat Pro subscriptions as a cost-cutting measure. Adobe Acrobat Pro is what you need to do redactions correctly. If that’s the case, it’s a fitting irony.

--I also told you before about the tip from the taxi driver who said the girl told him that a woman "with a funny name" had taken her into a hotel where she had been raped by Epstein and Trump. The taxi driver had encouraged her to contact law enforcement, and she had refused, saying, "they will kill me." And when the taxi driver had tried to follow up with her, he found that she had died in Kiefer, Oklahoma, with "her head blown off" in what the police were calling a suicide.

--Reporters have been following up on that story and found that a 19-year-old girl, Dusti Rhea Duke had in fact died in Kiefer, Oklahoma in a suicide. There was no police case file on her death and hardly any details, including what sort of injuries she had or what sort of gun was used.

--The Oklahoman: "A 19-year-old student from Kiefer died on Jan. 10, 2000, according to death notices in two newspapers, the Tulsa World and the Sapulpa Herald. The state’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Eric Pfeifer, told The Oklahoman on Dec. 24 that the death of Dusti Rhea Duke was ruled a suicide by a gunshot to the head. Her body was found at an address in Sapulpa, which is near Kiefer, according to medical examiner records."

--Tom Pain: "’The claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,’ reads a statement Thursday from the DOJ...What’s the forensic evidence? Easy to stage a suicide, wear gloves, shoot, put the gun in the dead girl’s hand, no way in hell does DOJ know that ‘the claims are unfounded and false.’"

--EatCake2026: "Too many Dead by Suicide people surrounding Epstein...isn’t that curious? Someone with that much money, power, and well-connected wouldn’t leave stones unturned, would they?"

--The DOJ now adamantly says the letter from Epstein to Larry Nasser,--the one in which Epstein referred to his impending death and said, "Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system" and which was written just before Epstein’s death, is a fake.

--The reason they’re giving for saying that is that the addresses on the letter and the postmark don’t match the prison where Epstein was held (it said a Virginia prison) and the fact that the letter was sent 3 days after Epstein died.

--HOWEVER, the return address is clearly to Jeffrey Epstein, Manhattan Correctional/NYC, 10007, which is the correct address.

--Also, the letter was mailed to Arizona, which often took 3 to 5 days, and all mail from that area of prisons goes through Virginia for processing. CNN says the envelope was sent from Epstein’s prison to Nasser and got vetted by federal officials, which explains the Virginia postmark.

--The date on the letter is August 13, which was a Monday. Epstein died on Friday. Mail sits in the prison over the weekend and then is routed on Monday.

--The FBI apparently wasn’t convinced it was a fake because they submitted it for handwriting analysis. The submission form has been made public, but not the results of the handwriting analysis. People are asking why the FBI didn’t release the analysis.

--They are also saying that the letter really exists, so if this is a fake, where’s the real one?

--The DOJ first said they were reviewing the matter, and then a few hours later pronounced it a complete fake.

There are other tips I’ll tell you about tomorrow (there are just too many to fit in one newsletter) but the one that’s getting all the attention is a file in which a (redacted) individual is looking for an update on the status of their earlier complaint:

--"I previously provided a tip about 3 weeks ago, maybe 4 weeks ago, under an alias...a detective from NYPD FBI sex trafficking task force called me a couple of weeks ago from a 212 area code number. I talked to him for about 20 or 30 minutes about my being sex trafficked by my uncle and Jeffrey Epstein while I was 13 and (pregnant)...I told him some other important information about other high profile individuals involved in my sex trafficking, and the murder and disposal of my newborn daughter because I gave birth to her while in the middle of this ordeal."

--In a section under which Trump’s name is listed, it says, "Again, just trying to find out about the NYPD detective on the FBI sex trafficking task force that called me a couple of weeks ago and spoke to me about some of these issues. How is Contact Known: He participated regularly in paying money to force me to (redacted) with him and he was present when my uncle murdered my newborn child and disposed of the body in Lake Michigan."

--AmoneyResists; "Turns out when Trump was talking about post-birth abortions, he was describing his own practices throwing newborn babies into Lake Michigan."

In Kennedy Center news:

--Ever focused on the essential business of the country, Trump announced today that the Kennedy Center seats will all now have marble armrests.

--Bill Kristol: "My aging arms have sought rest and respite many times while attending performances at the Kennedy Center. They have never said, ‘If only the armrests were cold, hard marble..."

--When jazz artist Chuck Redd found out that Trump had slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, he canceled his annual Christmas Eve performance, saying, "When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert."

--In response, the Trump administration announced they were suing him for $1 million dollars for canceling, saying, "Any artist canceling their show at the Trump Kennedy Center over political differences isn’t courageous or principled--they are selfish, intolerant, and have failed to meet the basic duty of a public artist: to perform for all the people."

--One probable hitch in Trump’s plans is that the contract almost certainly lists "the Kennedy Center" as one party to the contract. There no longer is any such thing, so the contract may be null and void. (Also you can’t force artists to perform in a political venue. To do so would be an endorsement of a political figure you don’t approve of.)

In Grinch news:

--ICE arrested a father on Christmas morning, handcuffing his kids and making them watch as they arrested him. One agent ripped the phone away from one of the kids and broke it. They also arrested three witnesses who were filming the arrest.

--Stephen Miller’s tweet about Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin is getting LOTS of pushback:

--In case you’ve forgotten, he tweeted ON CHRISTMAS, "Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world."

--Sherrilyn Ifill: "Imagine watching Sinatra, son of Dolly and Antonini born in Genoa and Sicily respectively, and Martin, son of Gaetano and Angela, born in Montesilvano, Italy, and Ohio respectively (Angela to parents born in Monasterolo, Italy) and crusading against the value of children of immigrants to the US."

--Jeff Yank: "Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Cocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti. Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonio Sinatra and Natalie Gasevanta. Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers."

--Antonine: "Frank Sinatra was also the guy who insisted a hotel he was staying at would also book a room for Sammy Davis, Jr. The hotel had a no-blacks policy, but Sinatra wouldn’t have it." (Note: he also refused to play for segregated audiences.)

--bikemike: "More evidence that immigrants enrich this country."

In Not Everybody’s a Monster news:

--A mystery donor in Idaho is giving away $1 million dollars to families in need. The families include a teacher whose house burned down and a family who just gave birth to conjoined twins, which means a future of many surgeries and hospital stays.

In resistance news:

--Dem Rep Dan Goldman works in the same building as the immigration courts. He was horrified by what ICE was doing, so he set up a "habeas machine" in his office which is devoted to quickly filing legal petitions that force ICE to justify their detentions and deportations in court.

--In Colorado, hundreds of people protested Trump’s move to abolish the National Climate and Research Center, which is the country’s premiere weather and climate hub. (Trump’s shutting it down because he’s mad that Colorado won’t release Tina Peters from prison.)

--Denver’s City Council voted against a resolution to allow Key Lime Air to lease space at DIA because they are flying immigrants to foreign countries for the DHS. Yay, Colorado!

In other news:

--Trump’s angelic-faced press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the one who wears a cross while she tells the most outrageous lies, announced yesterday that she was pregnant--and I swear the first thing that popped in my head was the musical CHICAGO, where the murderer Roxie Hart tells the press she’s pregnant as a distraction--and a way out of a mess.

--Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche doesn’t spend all his time redacting the Epstein files. He also shut down all cryptocoin enforcement and regulation--while holding ovr $150 thousand dollars in crypto investments himself.

--Major winter storms have hit a big chunk of the country for the holidays, causing major travel problems. Southern California experienced atmospheric rivers and tons of rain, New York City got 4 inches of snow, more than a thousand flights were canceled or delayed across the Northeast and Great Lakes regions due to snow, and the National Weather Service warned of hazardous travel conditions and possible power outages from the Great Lakes through the northern mid-Atlantic and southern New England/

--Trump has spent the last seven days golfing.

In good news:

--Judge Aileen Cannon finally agreed to release Volume 2 of Jack Smith’s special counsel report.

--A federal court ruled that lawyer Mark Zaid’s having his security clearance pulled because he’d represented whistleblowers and other clients who criticized the government was a clear case of unconstitutional retaliation against him for exercising his free speech.

--Utah repealed a ban on collective bargaining for teachers, firefighters, and police.

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, and Dem Senator Raphael Warnock had a Kwanzaa message for everyone: "Wishing a meaningful Kwanzaa to all who celebrate. May this week be a time to reflect on community, purpose, and the values that bind us together."

But the best comment of the day (and a slap in the face to Stephen Miller) has to go to a very young Frank Sinatra, addressing a bunch of boys:

"Do you know what this wonderful country is made up? It’s made up of a hundred kinds of people and a hundred different ways of talking and a hundred different ways of going to church, but they’re all American ways. Wouldn’t we be silly if we went around hating others because they comb their hair different from ours? Wouldn’t we be a lot of dopes? My dad came from Italy, but I’m an American. Should I hate your father because he came from Ireland or France or Russia? Wouldn’t I be a first-class fathead? Think about that, fellas. Use your good old American heads." *

Keep calm and carry on,

and Happy Kwanzaa,

Connie Willis

Connie also shared this link to first of a Meidas Plus series “500 Worst Things Trump did in 2025” https://www.meidasplus.com/p/500-worst-things-trump-did-in-2025